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Thomas Mann and the theory of “Crystalline Beauty”
Author(s) -
Gandelman Claude
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1982.tb00795.x
Subject(s) - metaphor , beauty , hegelianism , philosophy , abstraction , art history , art , literature , aesthetics , epistemology , theology
Chapter III of Thomas Mann's Doktor Fuustus introduces a series of experiments in the natural sciences, in particular experiments concerning nonorganic and organic crystallisation.The metaphor of crystals and crystallisation, far from being a secondary motiv in the novel, links Doktor Fuustus with the theory of the “crystalline beauty” which has its roots in Hegel's lectures on aesthetics but will later be developed further by art historians like Riegl and W orringer. Just as, for them, the crystal metaphor was a metaphor for abstraction in art, it is, for Thomas Mann, a metaphor of the dodecaphonic music of Adrian Leverkuhn.